PASSING STRANGE

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts: School of Drama

Directed by Christopher Burris

Scenic Design:

Gisela Estrada

Lighting Design:

Wheeler Moon

Sound Design:

Samuel Hayes

Costume Design:

Cassandra Sisson

Wig & Makeup Design:

Nathaniel Jones

Spring 2022, Technical Director

Automation Engineer:

Kaci Kidder

Draftsperson & Lead Carpenter:

Emmy Babyak

Passing Strange is a musical that follows a young black man from Los Angeles on his search to find what it means to be real. This was such an interesting show to work on. It is a musical with a relatively small cast, and three main locations that are all very distinct from each other in tone. We were also in the Catawba theatre at the UNCSA Performance Place, which is an arena style blackbox with a tension grid and small outer catwalk. This meant fitting a dynamic and practical set in a small space, but a space that could be almost anything. As my first Technical Director role at UNCSA it was really great to experience such a blank canvas theatre, and help organize everything into the tight space. This was also my first time having a dedicated Draftsperson, and it was a huge learning lesson on relinquishing the reins and having to communicate my engineering ideas to someone else. As such, I did not plate most of this show, so instead I includes pictures of my AutoCAD models.

The first unit we tackled was the runway platform. This was relatively straight forward, stock 4x8 platforms and 5 new ones. The most challenging part was the platforms on either end of the runway, which had a dancing pole through the center and a plexiglass panel off to the side to allow for in deck lighting. to help keep things simple, the lids of those platforms were cut on the CNC.

The show had three soft covered flats that were meant to represent sections of the Berlin wall. The largest flat had to be split in two to get it into the theatre, so it had a brace added to the back for support. These flats were on a bi-parting traveler track so they could store offstage in other scenes. I had never used traveler track before so it was a great experience to try something new. Hanging the track was a challenge, we overhauled it to the pipe grid from the floor with split sheaves and made the connection with trim chain.

Next were the two light boxes that framed the playing space on either side. These were steel 1x3 box tube frames lined in plywood to allow LED tape, and backed in 1x to give us a place to stretch muslin. I had not engineered much steel work up to this point, so this was a huge learning experience in engineering for fabricating.

The largest undertaking for the show was the window wall unit, a set of 4 automated panels that would move on a track to various positions throughout the show. Between our Automation Engineer Kaci Kidder and myself, we determined that the scenic team would be responsible for everything below the skates the units rode on, and the automation team would do everything above it. The panels themselves were a mixture of 1x2 and 2x2 box tube. We then added plywood taking strips to the back, and attached vinyl window screen dipped in Rosco Crystal Gel to the back to give it and old dirty glass appearance. We also made these large square brackets that mounted to the top of the panels to then attach to the automation system.